Woke up early this morning (7:30am!) to get up and ready so I could work my way uptown to meet Sean and Shira for breakfast at H&H Bagels. I got there a little before 9am, and realized when I arrived that this particular location – the factory on 46th Street – didn’t really have much of a storefront with service; sure you could buy delicious bagels, but they wouldn’t even toast – or slice – them. We had to buy …

If there’s one thing that NYC has no shortage of, it’s diversity. Cultures from all over the world can be found throughout the city, and anyone who so chooses can learn and enjoy the breadth that the world has to offer – through their food. Unofficially, Thursday became Italian Day. After sleeping in just a tad, I got my morning coffee fix at Grounded, over in the West Village. I had a pumpkin latte (since it was a little chilly …

The big finale for the festival was the third and last concert – a screening of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, with live music accompaniment for the entire film. This has been done before – Shore has been doing it for the trilogy starting a few years ago, but I never had the opportunity to see it in this manner. The huge orchestra, choir, boys choir, and soloists delivered a tour-de-force performance over the four …

We were picked up at the hotel a little after 8pm (we made sure to get to the lobby early this time – didn’t want to miss our ride again!), and we were taken back to the Steelworks for the Shigeru Umebayashi concert. Since last night was so cold, we all had prepared to bundle up – but it was such a mild evening that it was warm in the venue, and my sweatshirt and jacket sat on the chair …

The second panel, “Promoting Film Music” was to be hosted by Doug Adams, but unfortunately he was sick and unable to make the trip to Poland. Nancy Knutsen stepped in, and the panel was a bit freeform, with the topics ranging from soundtrack publicity, to websites, to music festivals and concerts. The last half hour was especially interesting,when one of the gentlemen in the audience got into a rather heated debate (all in Polish) with a few members of the …

Doubt is based on the Tony-winning play by Oscar-winning screenwriter John Patrick Shanley. Set at a Catholic School in the Bronx in the fall of 1964, the story swirls around the concerns that Sister Aloysius Beauvier (Meryl Streep) has regarding Father Brendan Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and his seemingly inappropriate relationship with the school’s first (and only) black student, Donald Muller (Joseph Foster). When the younger Sister James (Amy Adams) first notices some odd behavior in Donald, she brings it …